From the inside out

By Sally J. Johnson '14M

Sarah Messer has been carrying around a stack of
old books for six years. Each book is slightly different, but keeps
an instructional and educational tone.

Including titles such as Alexander Hamilton's The
Household Cyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Daily Wants
(W.J. Holland & Co, 1873) and The Modern Business
Speller (Lyons & Carnahan, 1901) by D.D. Mayne,
principal of Minnesota State School of Agriculture, the books range
from almanacs to instructional reads on how to be a better speller
or how to fashion a small pox mask.

While Messer is researching history, women and domestic studies
and literature, she's doing so to create something new.

Her research goes into her poetry, into the speakers in her
poems. Messer, associate professor of creative writing at
University of North Carolina Wilmington teaches her students the
same concepts: immerse yourself, find what you're trying to say and
how you are trying to say it.

The thought of heavy research may bring to mind biologists or
chemists, but research for a creative writer is nothing new.

"With nonfiction," says Messer, who also writes in the form,
"it's easier. You know what you're looking for, you're getting
information for the reader."

Messer Published in Prestigious Literary Journal

Sarah Messer's poem "Poem Beginning
with a Line by Ikkyu" was published in the spring 2012 issue
of Ploughshares.

Ploughshares is the literary
magazine of Emerson College in Boston. Since its founding in 1971,
each issue is guest edited by a prominent author.

This issue was guest edited by Nick Flynn,
a current University of Houston professor. He is best-known for his
memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (W. W.
Norton), which was recently made into a major film.

The issue is available in print ($14), and
electronically in Kindle and Nook (both $3.99). See www.pshares.org for
details.

Click here
to read a selection of Sarah Messer's poems and a
here to read an essay about her process of writing the poem
"The Evolution of Rape Law."

Messer and poets like her may or may not know what they'd like
to focus on in a poem until they find the right piece of
information. Information Messer found during researching sessions
while she was a fellow at the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study
at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library from 2008-09, or
accidentally when writing one of her daily, short poems.

Messer was one of 50 people at the Radcliff Institute at that
time. She focused in on 17th to early 19th century nonfiction books
to find details about everyday life, tone of voice and inspiration.
Though she went to the library with a focus in mind, Messer says it
began like searching and gathering.

"I think every poet does it, they just don't know it," she says
of researching, "I was just being active; looking for it in a
book."

But, she notes, this type of research makes her look internally
just as much, as if she's studying herself. In this way, she
believes she is "building a poem from the inside out."

Through this method of searching Messer wrote her poetry
collection Bandit Letters, (New Issues, 2001) and her
hybrid history/memoir, Red House: Being a Mostly
Accurate Account of New England's Oldest Continually Lived-in
House (Viking, 2004), which was among the 2004 Barnes &
Noble Discover Great New Writers picks. Both manuscripts stretch
beyond their genres, pulling from research she'd done for each one
specifically.

In her poem "Poem Beginning with a Line by Ikkyū," which was
published in the spring 2012 issue of Ploughshares,
the speaker says, "how the machine of my mind is never silent."
This might also ring true for the author as she combs numerous
sources in researching her poetry.

She looks through pages and pages, searching for a tone, a fact,
or a starting point. "It's almost like found poetry," she says,
alluding to a type of poetry that takes words, phrases, and/or
passages from other works. Though, she says, she's mostly getting
the character, or a few things and incorporating them into her
poems.

The stack of books she carries now is for her current project,
which is almost done, she says. The manuscript has been a finalist
for a couple prizes, though, she admits, "it won't be finished
until it's published. I'm always tinkering."